


We'll Always Have Fairyland

by sabrina_il (marina)



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan)
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 3, F/M, Post canon, Prague, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-25
Updated: 2013-02-25
Packaged: 2017-12-03 15:20:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/699666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marina/pseuds/sabrina_il





	We'll Always Have Fairyland

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



She disappears on him in Prague.

Before the sun is done rising she sneaks out of their hotel room - via the fire escape, of course, doors are for different people entirely - and takes a stroll to the heart of the ancient city, the square with the gorgeous, antique clock. It’s beautiful at sunrise, just as it was in the twilight hours of the day before. 

She takes a tram to the Charles Bridge, watches the sun slowly, lazily settle into illuminating the city. She walks around for a while, buys coffee and baked goods at a touristy little cafe. Looks up at the castle on the hill and charts lines of public transit and walking sections for the day on a map crinkled from its stay in Bruce’s pockets.

This city is like any city. At the center it’s beautiful, ancient, cleaned up and inviting to tourists. On the outskirts it’s perfunctory, usable, home to people who don’t wake up every morning to a view of fairyland. 

She never thought she’d get to see Europe. It was always in the back of her mind, on a sort of endless mental to-do list. _Go to Europe. Live out every cliche._ She’s thrown coins into the fountains in Florence, sailed along the Seine. Bruce has made sure they tour the continent in style.

They don’t talk about the fact that he’s already visited every place they’ve gone. That he used to travel here, alone with a backpack on his way to Asia and then again later, when he was already Batman, already the parody of a businessman Gotham knew, jetting away to London for business meetings he would spend “drunk” or miss entirely. 

This is new for Selina. All of it. It requires a breath. Over coffee and croissants, at a cafe in Prague, for example. 

Eventually they’ll go back to Gotham. She knows this. Not because they’ll feel forced to, not because Bruce will suddenly remember he still has something left to give. She’ll go back because the minute they left she realized something she had always feared and suspected was true. Gotham is _home_. It’s always going to be home. Filthy and ruined, ruled by gangs, full of corruption and chaos, Selina will always come back to it. Always find a place for herself among the skyscrapers. 

And Bruce will follow her back. Eventually. They’re alike, in this. Neither one of them will ever be happy anywhere else. 

But this vacation is nice. Selina sipps her espresso, which turns out to be mediocre. Around her the cafe is starting to fill up. A Russian couple, a few Italian university students. Selina packs up her map and gets up to leave.

She doesn’t know who they’ll be - her and Bruce - when they come back. Gotham is... different. Complicated. They’ve always lived in two different versions of it, or at least on two very different sides. Whatever Bruce says about knowing criminals, he still grew up privileged in ways he doesn’t realized. Selina likes him, respects him, maybe - maybe - will even come to love him one day, but she can’t predict what Gotham will do to them. Whether they’ll be able to make it work, going back to some semblance of their old lives, back home. 

But for the time being she can focus on this. Relaxation, exploration, nothing but joy. 

He finds her at the monastery, on the other side of the river. It’s past midday. She sits sipping a beer at a ridiculously expensive restaurant with an amazing view of the city. There’s not a cloud in the sky. 

“I missed you,” he says, pulling up a chair and sitting down, light gray suit perfectly ironed as always. “In the morning.”

“I’m glad you managed to find me, then,” she says, giving him a broad smile. 

He smiles back, amused. It’s not the first time they’ve played this cat-and-mouse game but it’s the longest it’s taken him to track her down since they left the Americas. 

“This is a beautiful city,” he says, looking out over the red roofs and the river and clear, blue sky.

“It really is,” Selina says, and sighs, and doesn’t wish they could stay right here, frozen, forever.

*


End file.
